Why the latest news from Malaysia helps to undermine authoritarianism throughout the region.

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL

Something remarkable is happening in Malaysia, and the rest of the world should take note.

Malaysia, you ask? Really? It’s only 28 million people, and it’s just one part of Southeast Asia, a region fragmented into a variety of cultures and systems — and largely off the radar of people in the West, except when it comes to planning honeymoons on the beach. So why should non-Malaysians care?

Last week, a Malaysian court acquitted Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the country’s main opposition movement, of sodomy charges. (Sodomy is a crime in Malaysia.) Anwar’s supporters have long maintained that the case against him was actually political, cooked up by the government to prevent him from mounting a credible challenge to the system that has ruled the country for decades. Anwar was arrested on similar charges back in 1998 and spent six years in jail before a court finally overturned his conviction. Many understandably expected the same thing to happen again this time around.

But it didn’t. To general astonishment, the court dismissed the accusations, saying that the DNA evidence cited by prosecutors didn’t hold up to scrutiny. The judges, it seemed, had actually assessed the case on its own value. And with that ruling, Anwar can now continue his campaign against the government, one that is likely to culminate in a general election within the next year or so.

So why should we regard this story as worth our attention? Well, it’s certainly true that the verdict could help Anwar lead the opposition to victory, thus overturning decades of control by the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO). But this is by no means a given. Just because Anwar has been pronounced innocent doesn’t mean that he’ll win. Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, notes that the opposition movement headed by Anwar is a fairlyvolatile coalition of different groups pulled apart by sometimes competing interests: “Anwar has a real challenge ahead,” Bower noted in a recent email to me. “As he and his supporters anticipated a guilty verdict, they had planned to rally around political martyrdom. Now they need to go back to basics and compete in an election based on an economic and policy platform and ensure their very diverse coalition gets unified around those ideas.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has been pledging to clean up corruption and reform the system from within, can now argue that efforts are bearing fruit. The verdict works in his favor as well.

And even if Anwar does win the next election, there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to deliver on his own promises of reform. Malaysia’s complicated political mix — in which ethnic Malays have long enjoyed the benefits of affirmative action programs designed to improve their chances against the country’s sizable Chinese and Indian minorities — will throw considerable obstacles in the way of any effort at fundamental change. It’s likely, of course, that imposing accountability on the ruling party is a good thing in itself. It’s hard to dispute the need for a thorough housecleaning of the entrenched Malaysian political elite.

But these are issues that matter primarily to Malaysians. What about the rest of us?

Here’s the thing. For decades now, Malaysian leaders — above all, the country’s crusty ex-prime minister, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad – have been arguing that the country owes its remarkable record of economic progress to something called “Asian values.” In this reading, Asians are inherently predisposed to discipline and thrift, traits often attributed to Confucianism or its influence. In line with this theory, the region’s authoritarian leaders have dismissed democratic institutions and “Anglo-Saxon” free-market capitalism as alien assaults on local mores. Of course, this was an argument that just happened to have the handy side effect of shoring up the legitimacy of said authoritarian leaders. As long as they could reasonably claim to be delivering the goods of rapid growth and social stability, many voters were content to take the claim at face value.

Of late, however, the “Asian values” model has been taking some dents. Indonesians threw their dictator overboard at the turn of the century and now enjoy one of the region’s strongest economic growth rates. Last year, voters inSingapore, long controlled by the ruthlessly efficient People’s Action Party (PAP), handed surprising victories to opposition candidates. (To be sure, the PAP is still in power – but its share of the popular vote declined to just over 60 percent, its worst result since 1965, when Singapore became a country.) Meanwhile, Myanmar’s military rulers have announced that they want to free up the country’s political system, and the leaders of its long-abused opposition are preparing to participate in a parliamentary by-election in the spring. And now the story in Malaysia is getting interesting too.

Some of the other societies in the region aren’t quite there yet. But while Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos all maintain authoritarian forms of government, they have opened up considerably in economic terms. So what’s to stop them from one day following in the footsteps of Singapore or Malaysia?

Around the region, people are increasingly expressing a desire for official accountability. Economic growth on its own is not enough to satiate the desires of a rising middle class that is tired of being patronized by the powers-that-be. These citizens are insisting on participation, transparency, and an end to corruption.

Indeed, it would seem that these are the real Asian values now coming to the fore. Last month, writing in a Malaysian newspaper, journalist Karim Raslannoted that, under the old rules of the game, were willing to concede certain civil liberties in return for implicit government guarantees of “prosperity and social peace.” But that compact no longer holds: “This worked well enough when the economy was growing and internal checks and balances prevented undue injustice,” wrote Raslan. “Unfortunately, a stalling economy has brought out our inherent weaknesses, including corruption and mismanagement. Moreover, there’s a mounting sense –whether true or not — that elite groups are securing enormous personal benefit by manipulating the system.” As a result, he suggested, Malaysians are now starting to think seriously about throwing the bums out.

None of this, of course, means that the people in these countries are necessarily striving to embrace the Washington Consensus or the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy. The push for greater openness is coming from the region’s peoples themselves, not being imposed from without. And it is precisely for that reason that the rulers’ self-aggrandizing claims of legitimacy are sounding hollower by the day. So, once again, why is this important to Westerners or Americans?

Because it’s not just Malaysians or Singaporeans who will feel the effects. The Chinese Communist Party has long legitimized its rule in terms strikingly similar to those employed by Mahathir or Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. But suddenly those arguments about wise rulers lording it over happy and quiescent populations are looking, well, very 1999. “These values will continue to force change in Asia,” Bower notes. “In fact, it is likely that political evolution in Southeast Asia may influence China more in the next five years than Chinese economic dynamism influences Southeast Asia.” And there’s the real take-away from this story.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, taking a leaf from Mahathir Mohamad, has launched the Global Movement of the Moderates (GMM) in Putrajaya on Tuesday this week.

But of what good can it do for Malaysia or the world is a source of national and international puzzlement. What is certain though, the event will cost Malaysian taxpayers a pretty penny indeed – all for the purpose of boosting Najib’s ego and padding his resume or legacy, if you will.

The implication here is that Islamic fundamentalists everywhere are engaged in a Global War of Terrorism against the west and its allies. The so-called moderates, like Najib, want to distance themselves from this militant form of Islam propagated by a tiny minority. In the process, they want to buy "respectability' and support from the international community for their own self-serving political survival.

Muslim extremism or terrorism

To digress a little, militant Islam worldwide has its roots in the madrasahs in Pakistan, many of which are funded by Saudi Arabian money. These madrasahs don't impart any form of learning in science and mathematics and secular knowledge. Instead, they preach nothing but unmitigated hatred of non-Muslims among the impoverished and therefore vulnerable bands of Muslim youth everywhere.

The idea is to turn increasingly vulnerable Muslim youth into illiterate suicide bombers who can be relied on as so much cannon fodder and/or to strike terror in public places, and military establishments, and sow a general feeling of government ineptitude and helplessness in the face of insecurity in the non-Muslim world and among the ruling elite in the Muslim world.

The objective: to increase the cost of doing business in the non-Muslim world, the west and India in particular, increase insurance and security costs and depress values in currency, collateral, land, shares, properties and other investments and instruments.

The objective: to drive the non-Muslim world, the west and India in particular towards insolvency and the collapse of secular Muslim regimes.

The objective: to foster the emergence of a worldwide Muslim Empire in the form of the return of the Caliphate, to replace secular Muslim regimes, while destroying the papacy and ensuring the subjugation of the non-Muslim world.

Nearer home, Pakistan sees militant Islam as a unifying force against being re-absorbed by India, its giant secular neighbour which continues to get more powerful by the day and cause jitters among the ruling elite in Islamabad.

Anwar was a moderate long before the word became politically popular

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim in fact assumed, albeit in public, a moderate stance in Islam even long before the advent of militant Islam worldwide. This is the reason why he has ever since then been lionised by the west and invited to join the lecture circuit in academia and other forums elsewhere, open and closed.

The west meanwhile also stands accused of being engaged in endless wars, arms peddling and the like, unlike the so-called moderates like Najib and Malaysia who ostensibly preach a more "moderate", presumably pacifist, vision in diplomacy, crisis management, conflict resolution and economics. This is a repeat of Mahathir's attempts to get the world community to criminalise war.

The west would argue that they would have to demonstrate their ability to ensure global security, at least for themselves, in the face of all forms of militancy. The level and degree of maintainance of global security, in turn, would manifest itself in facilitating cost-efficiency in doing business and the like as already outlined.

By latching on to the "moderate" label, Najib is obviously also trying to erase public perceptions of him as an extremist, racist, ultra and perhaps even a fanatic in a way.

But can a leopard change its spots

The question that arises is whether a leopard can change its spots, and if so, it will surely turn Darwinism upside down and be a first in the history of evolution. Evolution decrees that one makes a difference for the better or worse, evolving towards one or the other. But that doesn't mean one can begin in evil and evolve towards good or vice versa.

Memories of Najib raising the Malay keris or sword at an Umno Youth meet, some time ago in his past, and swearing to bathe it in Chinese blood are still fresh in the public mind. Anyone with access to the internet can Google the despicable incident complete with pictures.

If we are going to give the benefit of the doubt to Najib, and assuming the leopard can indeed change its spots, the question that arises is whether he can go beyond mere rhetoric and rise to the occasion.

Charity begins at home.

Najib cannot wear the moderate hat outside the country and the hat of opposites – extremist, racist, ultra, fanatic – at home.

He has to choose whether he wants to be known and remembered as a moderate, both at home and abroad, or show himself in his true colours.

Not qualified

Patently, Najib the 'keris' is not qualified to claim the moderate label unless he can redeem himself from his past.

For the record, Najib presides over a government and system which has institutionalised racism – prejudice and opportunism included — and encourages virtually slavery through statelessness, human trafficking and illegal immigration.

This issue among others, including the observance of key tenets of the Federal Constitution more often than not in the breach, has been flogged to death in the past.

Briefly, Article 153, Article 3, Article 8, Article 10 and the like and the New Economic Policy (NEP), the use of the term Bumiputera for groups not sanctioned by the Federal Constitution, a misreading of the term "Malay" and politicising Malaysian history when not basing it for chunks on the fairy tales in the Sejarah Melayu.

Lying to the country is bad enough, stop lying to the world

Najib has tried to pull the wool over the public eyes by emphasising on government transformation and economic transformation and so far all on paper.

But man does not live by bread alone. Najib cannot impress Malaysians by trotting out figures on Key Performances Indexes, the amount of foreign investment gathered and the like.

He needs to grab the bull by the horns and ensure fundamental political reforms are put in place. No one in the richer states and the urban areas is any longer interested in bread-and-butter issues.

Promising even more development – including in the form of piped water and electricity more than 50 years after the British left – and doling out our money to ourselves in the form of vote-buying bribes under various guises is not the way to go.

One can bluff some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the time.

It's high time that Najib and his ruling Umno stop the politics of distraction and disruption and decide where politics ends and good government begins. Either shape up or ship out. Don't waste our time!